Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 2

Picking up where I left off: there’s an alien virus in Manhattan, which somehow causes aliens to invade, and there’s a bunch of enemy soldiers, and I still don’t really get the plot because I was too busy kicking things to pay attention.

Reading the Wikipedia page helps a little. The enemy soldiers are military contractors who want to kill me because they think I’m Prophet, who they were trying to kill because he was infected with the alien virus. So, it’s just a wacky case of mistaken identity that could be cleared up by me telling everyone that I’m not Prophet. Or, you know, I could just keep killing them. I think I’ll do that!

CRYSIS 2, PART 2

I’m in a new area where there are many more yelling soldiers.

My strategy is, shoot at them until I start taking damage, turn invisible, flank them, shoot at them again. It’s fun, but it’s starting to feel a little same-y.

I found a new machine gun, but to take it I have to give up my pistol. I miss the days when you could carry every single weapon you found. I don’t like being without a pistol. Doesn’t this $300 million nanosuit have a holster?

I was going to give some points to Crysis 2 because it hasn’t crashed and there haven’t been any graphical glitches. But that’s kind of weird. That’s like buying a Prius and saying “Well, it didn’t explode when I used the turn signal and the airbags didn’t go off in my face when I turned on the radio, so it’s a good car.” PC gamers just have such low expectations for games, I guess. I need to break that habit of awarding points for simply working properly.

Still… it hasn’t crashed!

Grenades! I have grenades now. I immediately throw four of them and completely miss everyone I’m throwing them at. I’ve never been good at throwing grenades.

Also I’m not good that those grenade launcher weapons, where you sort of have a distance-based iron sight thing? And your grenade flies in an arc? And you sort of have to aim using the correct notch on the distance sight thing? I’m not explaining it well, but do you know the ones I mean? I’m terrible with those.

I think I miss the jungle from the first game. Half-destroyed cities are cool, but jungles are cooler.

I remember in the first game, I could shoot a tree until it fell down, then shoot the trunk into smaller pieces, then pick up the smaller pieces and throw them at people. That was fun.

I’m in a subway. There’s a bunch of people who I guess are infected with the virus. I try to punch them and shoot them and the game won’t let me. I know it’s weird to complain that I can’t punch or kill innocent sick people, but come on. I’m not saying it’s a GOOD thing to kill civilians, but there’s no explanation why I can’t.

Some helicopters just shot down an alien spaceship, which crashed through a building. That looked like fun, shooting down alien spaceships. I don’t like when NPCs in games are doing cooler things than I’m doing. I’m the player so I should be having all the fun, not some stupid NPCs.

Like Alyx in the HL2 Episodes. She could climb buildings and kick zombies in the face and whack them with the butt of her shotgun and use sniper rifles. And I’m just standing there with a stupid crowbar going DUHHHHHHH.

The scientist calls me. He’s very excited about the crashed spaceship, and wants me to find it and bring him samples. I will do it for him! If I can’t find the spaceship parts, I will just bring him some old junk I find and see if he can tell the difference using science.

I’m in a parking garage, which is definitely not as cool as a jungle. Tired of the cloak-and-shoot plan, I decide to try power-kicking a car into a couple soldiers. I kick the car and it explodes in my face. I guess it’s not a Prius.

I can slide! If I run and then crouch it turns into a slide! It reminds me of Mirror’s Edge. I am going to slide all over this goddamn city now. That scientist is going to be calling me on the radio going “Prophet! Where’s my exploded spaceship parts!” and I’m gonna be all “Not now. Sliding.”

So, the deal is, the nanosuit was tied into Prophet’s DNA, and now that I’m wearing it, it’s slowly beginning to integrate my DNA, giving me access to more abilities one at a time, I guess. Like sliding. I think the idea is, the developers wanted to slowly give you more power as you play, which is pretty common for games. The original game, if I remember correctly, just gave you the suit and said, “You’re a badass, have fun,” and I don’t remember that being overwhelming or a problem, so this new approach is maybe a little unnecessary. This is probably something everyone but me has already realized.

Picked up some lasers sights for my machine guns. Cool! No, wait, they suck. I take them off immediately and stick with iron sights.

I just died after trying to take a close-up screenshot of me killing a soldier. Now I have to do this level over. I hate checkpoint saves.

I don’t feel like re-doing this whole level right now, so I’m stopping here.

Sorry there aren’t more screenshots. I took a ton of them but they’re all of really stupid, boring things and none of them have anything to do with any of the bullet points.

Review Score, Part 2: Pros: I can slide, and shooting is still fun but I hope there’s some new types of fights to have coming up. Cons: I’m missing the jungle and checkpoint saves are annoying me. B